


and deadly shades of blue

by Mici (noharlembeat)



Category: Young Avengers
Genre: AU, Angst, Character Death, Dark, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, what-if scenarios
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-19
Updated: 2012-12-19
Packaged: 2017-11-21 14:21:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/598749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noharlembeat/pseuds/Mici
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Avengers decide to kill Billy sooner, and the person it turns him into.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and deadly shades of blue

The problem with anger is that it isn’t a rational thing. Anger with the world, that’s broad, that’s easy to turn into something else, something constructive. Eli, for instance, that’s anger at the world, at injustice. It’s the smaller angers, the anger of being ignored or the anger of a thousand tiny injustices, that’s dangerous. It’s the tipping point that breaks the vase, shatters it beyond repair.

____

Teddy rubs his eyes when he wakes up and wonders what day it is. He doesn’t remember dates anymore, or even the more basic things like days of the week. He’ll look it up in the morning on his watch (Christmas, two years ago, Billy’s smile was hesitant and fleeting, like his smiles usually were, short and simple and awkward, the kind of smile that made Teddy want to bury his face into Billy’s neck because _fuck he loves this boy so much_ ) and then promptly forget. Sometimes it’s not morning when he wakes up, but afternoon, or even nighttime, sometimes he misses days or weeks because he’s sleeping too much or not sleeping at all.

Lately it’s been _not sleeping at all_. 

He looks at his watch again and gets up and gets dressed – one pant leg, then the other, pull the gigantic zipper pull, run a hand through his hair so he doesn’t look like a total mess, stretch, one hundred pushups. Breakfast. Check the television.

No news of Wiccan yet. Teddy can’t decide if that’s good or not. When this started it felt like a blessing, each day that he woke up and the world around him was normal, each day he woke up and he wasn’t in some strange dystopian hell where Wiccan wasn’t ruling from some ridiculous throne made of lightning or wind or hell, people, on top of the Empire State Building. It felt like a blessing each day that passed that the world turned and the news continued the same as it always had.

Now, he’s not sure about that anymore. At least if there was chaos, pandemonium, Teddy wouldn’t feel so completely lost all the time. He would know what to do. He would be able to find Wiccan somewhere, and each passing day would feel a little less that he should be preparing for something even worse than just a simple rewrite of the world.

Honestly, he kind of hopes that the spell he’s doing is just a rewrite of the world, because then Teddy wouldn’t know the difference. How selfish, that’s how he feels, but that’s what it is. 

_____

“They want to kill me.” Billy’s voice sounds something between disbelieving and terrified. 

“I’m not going to let them kill you, Billy,” Teddy says, his hands on Billy’s shoulders. He looks into Billy’s face as though there’s something there that he can extract from the way that Billy’s eyelashes settle on his cheeks, but there isn’t. In a lot of ways, Teddy never knows what Billy is thinking. It’s just that he plays everything so close to the chest. He opens up emotionally, sometimes, just to Teddy, but moments like this Teddy has no idea what’s going through his head. 

Billy spends a long time looking at the ground and finally, after a long moment, he whispers, “I can’t believe that Cap’ is okay with this.”

Teddy feels his heart hit the base of his stomach. “You don’t know he is,” Teddy says. “He might not have a choice,” he adds. The Avengers is a democracy. Wolverine and Tony Stark aren’t known for being kind when it comes to hard decisions, and as Tony Stark goes, so goes Hank Pym. Who knows how Clint Barton feels about them, too. He always liked Kate, but what does that actually mean? It might not mean anything at all.

But the words don’t make a difference. Billy’s face is like a wall, smooth and unreadable, his eyes flicking from one side to another. Teddy wants to know what he’s thinking – is he thinking about that power suppressor that Tony made him wear last year in prison? He told Teddy how he couldn’t think in it, how he felt the weight of his power buzzing in his head but he couldn’t even form words or concentrate on anything for more than a second, how much it hurt. Is he thinking about the Cube and that man torturing them on Tony’s dime? Teddy doesn’t remember any of that, he was passed out the whole time, and it’s Billy who has the images etched in his head. Or is he remembering other things, like assassinations attempts that the Avengers were too late to save someone from (it hurts Teddy’s heart there, for an instant, his _mom_ ) or being attacked by Osborn’s Avengers (does that count?)? 

Finally Billy looks up. “Let’s go,” he says.

Teddy takes his hand, no hesitation. “You say the word.”

____

“It’s not cruelty if he’s suffering, right?”

“Billy, don’t do this.”

“It’s not cruelty if he’s suffering, _right_ , Teddy?” There is a desperate hope there, like the logic doesn’t work out in Billy’s head, like there’s something just slightly wrong there but the puzzle is fitting together at the same time. It hurts Teddy to watch this, because he needs to stop it but Billy’s hands are covered in blue light and Hank Pym is bleeding from the mouth, his eyes staring right at Teddy. 

Teddy wishes they said something like _please_ or _mercy_ , but instead they say something more like _I told you so_. If they said something less insufferable, this would be so much easier.

“Teddy!”

“Don’t do it, Billy. Don’t do it. Heal him. He can get better.”

That’s the wrong thing to say, it seems. The light around Billy glows brighter and suddenly there’s a snap, and Hank Pym isn’t breathing anymore. “He shouldn’t have the right to get better,” Billy says, and he looks more sick than angry. Afraid. “He wasn’t going to give it to me. Why should I be the better man? Why should I be generous?” 

Teddy can feel the horror on his face, but for once, he can’t shift it away.

___

“Any news?” Kate’s voice is tinny over the phone, but reception is terrible. “Because we’ve got nothing,” she adds, as if that wasn’t obvious. “Eli’s exhausted.”

“No news,” Teddy says. Morning after morning, they do this, they have this same conversation. It varies very little, but mostly it’s the same. 

Today Kate decides to change the game. “You know I was thinking,” she begins, and pauses as if Teddy will insert something witty or funny or scathing. When he doesn’t, she continues. “What if he just wants to be left alone? What if he really won’t do anything?”

“You weren’t there, Katie,” Teddy says, and he feels his voice roughen, deepen, turn nasty and ugly. He wants to be nice, because he’s the nice one, he always has been, but recently he can’t. He can’t control his shape anymore. “He’s dangerous, and it’s my-“

“It’s not your fault. You didn’t make him choose this,” Kate says. “You feel guilty, that’s all,” she adds, as if she’s commenting on the weather.

Teddy can’t manage words. He just hangs the phone up and turns it off, and closes his eyes.

He wishes it was as simple as _guilt_. He wishes that is was as simple as feeling bad because he couldn’t stop Wiccan. The truth is so much more simple and so much more complicated. Towards the end, towards the part where Billy’s mind was falling apart and his logic was terrible, and he was forgetting everything that made him a hero, once-upon-a-time, he tried to hurt Teddy.

Sometimes Teddy hates that he has a healing factor. The truth is that pain doesn’t mean much when in a moment it’s gone and your body is knitting itself back up, because at the moment that Billy was trying to hurt him, he was wishing that he could be hurt. He wanted control of his healing factor, wanted the ability to turn it off, because that would mean that he could feel real pain for more than an instant.

If he hurt, maybe he could relate to Billy a little more, because Billy was in so much pain then, and Teddy couldn’t do anything except hold him, and after a while that balm became as much a problem as it was a comfort. Teddy isn’t someone who has ever thought about how the pain was too great and sliced his arms for whatever reason, but now he wishes, for an instant, that he could, and the thought makes him sick.

____

“I just want to go home,” Billy says softly into Teddy’s chest. It’s only been three days, and he misses his parents and his brothers and he misses the team. “I wish I could go home.”

____

“If you want to go home, then _go home_ , Teddy!” Billy’s voice taking on that edge, and it’s an edge that Teddy’s heard a little too often recently, the edge that says that soon the lights around them will turn that eerie blue (isn’t it funny how just weeks ago that blue wasn’t eerie, it was warm and familiar and beautiful, it meant that Billy was nearby and everything was perfect) and Billy will blink or say something and something will happen.

“I want to go home with you!” Teddy argues, because even though Billy is angry and frustrated, Teddy isn’t and never will be afraid of him. “That’s where my home _is_!”

Billy snorts and speaks, and his voice is soft and dangerous. “You don’t honestly believe that anymore, do you? I can’t go home, they want me _dead_ , in case the bodies we’ve been leaving behind us aren’t an indication. Wolverine will find me any day and I need to save all the energy I have into staying alive.”

Teddy knows all this. He knows it, to a degree, better than Billy does, because Billy’s killed two Avengers and hurt a third to the point that Teddy isn’t sure that Spiderman will ever be able to use that arm again, and Teddy hasn’t done anything except try and convince Billy not to do those things. “They didn’t kill Magneto, they won’t kill you-“

“Don’t be naïve,” Billy says. “Go home, Teddy,” he says, and suddenly he’s soft for an instant. “I love you,” Billy says, with a hitch in his voice. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You can’t,” Teddy says, and Teddy knows that’s true because Billy’s tried. He moves and puts his arms around Billy. “I love you too. Let’s go home,” he says again, almost pleading. He hopes, maybe, that Billy can find a new identity with his magic, and Teddy can shift, and he knows that Eli and Kate and Tommy will understand, after explaining. 

Billy is crying now, which makes Teddy’s heart ache, and there’s blue light again. “ _Go home_ ,” he says, and Teddy opens his mouth to protest, but then he’s on a perfectly made bed looking at the desk in his bedroom, and he punches the wall so hard his fist goes through it.

____

It’s almost an accident when he sees him again, because Wiccan is so notoriously careful, and so notoriously reactive. He’s sitting in a comic book store, lankier than the last time Teddy saw him. Of course he should have expected it, because Tommy is lankier too, but Teddy just remembers every inch of Wiccan’s body like the last time that they were together. 

Wiccan is pressed between longboxes in the back of Midtown Comics, and he’s paging through a copy of Captain America, and there’s a certain hardness to his face that wasn’t there before, but he doesn’t look angry. In fact, he looks thoughtful and quiet, his eyes (blue, they weren’t blue before, they were brown and dark, Teddy remembers that so clearly, and the fact that they turned blue is a little scary because what it could mean about how much Wiccan uses his magic is terrifying) are flicking from one side of the comic to the other, scanning, devouring it as if it will disappear if he doesn’t read it fast enough.

Teddy doesn’t move. He isn’t sure how to move, honestly. He feels like he’s seen something – a tiger, a lion, something wild and dangerous and deadly but beautiful and skittish – and he doesn’t want to scare it away, or scare it into attacking. He wills the moment to lengthen into something infinite. He wonders what Wiccan is doing here, in Midtown comics, because it’s dangerous even though the Young Avengers disbanded (how could they stay together, without Billy, when Teddy was a mess and Eli and Kate kept snapping at each other, Cassie took Hank’s place in the Avengers with Vision, and Tommy started only showing up at holidays because Billy’s family didn’t talk about how much they needed him around when they clearly did?) almost a year ago now, the Avengers didn’t exactly give up the search for Wiccan. He was still dangerous. There were still disasters attributed to his anger – Teddy just missed him several times, because no one would tell him when they were going to fight him in because he showed up and just started destroying things like Avengers strongholds or the Initiative Camp.

But the moment breaks when Wiccan looks up and his eyes widen. “No no no,” he begins. “You’re not supposed to shop here, you go to Forbidden Planet, you always have, you don’t _come here_ ,” he says, and there’s a panic to his voice, and Teddy holds up his hands as if to show he’s harmless, when they both know that’s not true in this case. The harm Teddy can do is enormous. “Why are you here?”

“I was in the neighborhood and I wanted to pick up some comics,” Teddy says softly, as if the lower his voice is, the less likely Wiccan will destroy the comic shop in a fit of fear. “What are you doing here?”

Wiccan’s eyes shift to the door, and it slowly shuts, and Teddy knows that it won’t open until Wiccan decides to leave. A locked door won’t slow Wolverine too much, if the Canadian is hiding and waiting for Teddy’s signal, but it might give Wiccan the split second he needs to get away. There’s a moment, and Teddy can’t tell what Wiccan is thinking, he can’t even begin to suppose what might be running through his mind right now.

Finally Wiccan speaks. “I just wanted to feel normal again.”

Teddy moves to sit next to him, his ex-boyfriend (it took six months for Teddy to admit that) and offer his hand. Wiccan stares at it for a long time, and Teddy just decides to talk. “You could have come back with me,” he says. “I would have protected you.”

“You shouldn’t have to,” Wiccan says, still staring at his hand. He clears his throat, and it almost comes out sheepish. “Are you dating anyone?”

Teddy can’t help but laugh. “Seriously?” he asks. “The first time I see my supervillain ex in a year and the first thing you ask is if I’m seeing someone?”

Wiccan’s eyes go sharply to Teddy’s face for an instant, and Teddy’s sorry he used the word _ex_ , when Wiccan laughs, and it’s a familiar sound. It makes the compass in Teddy’s heart turn, it makes every fiber of him say _this is who you’re supposed to be with, why aren’t you?_ and that hurts. But what hurts more is that an instant later, Wiccan’s hand is in his, just for a moment. There’s a squeeze and in that instant they look, for all the world, like they did a year ago, before this turned sour and wrong. They look like they’re in love, casually, perfectly. Wiccan’s face softens and it’s Billy, absolutely, without even the slightest bit of doubt.

Teddy almost wishes he hadn’t heard that tiny breath, the one that hitches, the one that used to mean that Billy was going to open up, because then the instant is over, and the wall that separates them is back up; Wiccan’s face goes hard again. Wiccan’s eyes flash blue and Teddy finds himself alone again. The door to the comic book shop opens.


End file.
